Comedy as a rite

Comedy as a rite

The Tractatus was not printed until 1839, and its influence on comic theory is thus of relatively modern date. It is frequently cited in the studies that attempt to combine literary criticism and anthropology, in the manner in which James George Frazer combined studies of primitive religion and culture in The Golden Bough (1890–1915). In such works, comedy and tragedy alike are traced to a prehistoric death-and-resurrection ceremonial, a seasonal pantomime in which the old year, in the guise of an aged king (or hero or god), is killed, and the new spirit of fertility, the resurrection or initiation of the young king, is brought in. 

This rite typically featured a ritual combat, or agon, between the representatives of the old and the new seasons, a feast in which the sacrificial body of the slain king was devoured, a marriage between the victorious new king and his chosen bride, and a final triumphal procession in celebration of the reincarnation or resurrection of the slain god. Implicit in the whole ceremony is the ancient rite of purging the tribe through the expulsion of a scapegoat, who carries away the accumulated sins of the past year. 

Frazer, speaking of scapegoats in The Golden Bough, noted that this expulsion of devils was commonly preceded or followed by a period of general license, an abandonment of the ordinary restraints of society during which all offenses except the gravest go unpunished. This quality of Saturnalia is characteristic of comedy from ancient Greecethrough medieval Europe.

The seasonal rites that celebrate the yearly cycle of birth, death, and rebirth were seen by the Canadian critic Northrop Frye as the basis for the generic plots of comedy, romance, tragedy, and irony and satire. The four prefigure the fate of a hero and the society he brings into being. In comedy (representing the season of spring), the hero appears in a society controlled by obstructing characters and succeeds in wresting it from their grasp. The movement of comedy of this sort typically replaces falsehood with truth, illusion with reality. 

The hero, having come into possession of his new society, sets forth upon adventures, and these are the province of romance (summer). Tragedy (autumn) commemorates the hero’s passion and death. Ironyand satire (winter) depict a world from which the hero has disappeared, a vision of “unidealized existence.” With spring, the hero is born anew.